Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Keyword Research:
Before proper optimization can take place, research must be done to identify "what your web site is about", and how people are searching for the information or service your web site provides. A great tool for this type of research is Google's Keyword Research Tool. To use this tool, place the general topic of the web page you're looking to optimize into their "Keyword" box, and Google will provide a list of terms related to your keyword, and will show you how often those terms are searched on through Google.

The idea behind this tool is to help you understand which terms, related to the content of your web page, will be most searched for by an Internet user. You can then try to focus the content of your page around these specific terms (keywords), resulting in your site appearing in the top of the search engines results pages for the most popular searches.

Where to Start:
The keyword search explained above should provide you with two or three key terms per web page to optimize for. When prioritizing which pages of your site to optimize first, it's best to begin with the home page, as this page will have the strongest chance ranking the highest. From there, you'll want to optimize the top level pages on your site. These pages are usually "overview" or "category" pages that speak in more general terms then the "product" or "detail" pages. After the higher level pages have been optimized, move on to the specific, detailed level pages of your site. Keep in mind that each page on your web site should have unique content. Therefore you will want to do keyword research for each page, and each page's content should be optimzied for those keywords.

What to Optimize:
In general, search engines calculate the ranking of a web page by giving a weight or value to various elements of the page. For example, search engine find a pages <Title> tag to be very important, <H1> slightly less important, and <H2> to be almost non-significant. Therefore it is important to understand which on-page elements are most important, and optimize them first for the keywords chosen in your research.

Here is a list of important on-page elements to optimize:

• Title Tag <Title>
• Header Tags <H1>
• Page Content (Make sure the content of your page talks about your keywords chosen)
  
• Alt Tags <alt="keywords">

Here is a list of lesser-important on-page elements to optimize:

• Meta Description Tag
  
• Meta Keywords Tag
• Lesser Header Tags <H2>,<H3>

A Search Engine Friendly Site:
Search engines are great at finding the content on your site, but there are some things you can do to make sure search engines have an even EASIER time finding your content.
- Main Navigation: Your site's navigation links are as important to search engines as they are to human visitors. Search engines prefer a navigation made up of text based links, not Javascript or Flash based.
- Site Map: Your web site should contain both a HTML sitemap for visitors, as well as an XML sitemap for search engines. Your HTML sitemap should be linked to from your homepage, and should contain text based links to all major portions of your web site.
- URL Structure: Search engines, like humans, prefer short, easy to read URL's. Try to avoid long dynamic URL's with too many special characters (?,&,%, session id's, etc).
- Redirects: Avoid redirects when possible, especially javascript and meta redirects. If a redirect from an old page is needed to direct a visitor to a new page, make sure to use a SEO friendly method is used.
- Internal Linking Structure: Search engines find web pages via links, so the best way for a search engine to find all your content make sure that every page on your site is linked to from another page on your site.

Search engines also gain information about a page through the anchor text of a link. This anchor text tells the search engine what the destination page is about, and should contain the destination pages keywords whenever possible.

Increasing the Creditability of Your Site:
The ceditability of a web site is a major factor in determining how well a page will rank in the search engines. Search engines will find a site like Ford.com to be more of an authority on Ford Mustangs, then a Mustang fan site. One of the primary factors that makes Ford.com creditable to search engines is the fact that millions of other web sites link to Ford.com.

Fact is, search engines see links as a relationship between sites, and a site that has many other sites linking to it means that the site receiving the links must be valuable, popular and creditable. Search engines have found that when people search for information or a service, the most valuable, popular and creditable web sites typically have the information the user is looking for resulting in the best search experience.

How to make your site valuable, popular and creditable:

• Provide content on your web site that users will find valuable.
• Attain links from other related web sites to your valuable content.
• Look at what web sites link to your competitors, and see if they will link to you.
• Engage in online communities - friendships you develop may results in help buildling incoming links.
  
• Request the incoming links use your destination pages keywords as their anchor text.
• List your site in authoritative directories such as: DMOZ, Yahoo! Directory, and Business.com.
• Share your buzz-worthy content with blogs, media sites and social networks to help build site awarness and incoming links.

Please let me know if you'd like me to discuss certain topic in more detail.
Dan Cristo
www.dancristo.com

Dan Cristo is a Search Engine Optimization Specialist at Zeta Interactive.